Word: thermonuclear
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...future choice. To Senator Knowland and millions of other Americans, such a proposition is likely to sound like the thing they fear most-the yielding of sovereignty. Nevertheless, the U.S. this year needs to reflect upon and discuss such a basic revision of the U.N. The reality of thermonuclear weapons poses the problem of international law in a way that can not be brushed...
...account minimizes his own part in that development far beneath the credit given him by other scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer. Says Teller: "I want to claim credit in one respect only. I believed and continued to believe in the possibility and the necessity of developing the thermonuclear bomb." Wholly aside from his theoretical contributions, this is Teller's lien upon the gratitude of his countrymen, that he was not diverted from the path of scientific advance by confusion over nonscientific considerations...
...some use. Bukharin even offered to turn over the Leningrad electrical works to Gamow for a few hours every night for experimentation. Gamow replied that no practical application was possible. But the incident stuck in his mind, and he was later to stir the interest of U.S. scientists in thermonuclear reactions like those inside the stars. (If the Communists ever decide to canonize Bukharin, whom they executed in 1938, they may claim him as the grandfather of the H-bomb...
...Gamow's interest in stellar reactions led Hans Bethe to calculate systematically all thermonuclear reactions. Says Teller: "Gamow had invented a new kind of game for the physicists, and Bethe proved to be the champion...
...scientist expected to be able to arrange thermonuclear reactions similar to those they studied in the stars; the required heat seemed unattainable. In 1938 Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered nuclear fission, and their discovery led directly to the Abomb. And fission, with its intense release of energy, also suggested that conditions could be created under which thermonuclear reactions might occur. The late Enrico Fermi in 1942 suggested to Teller that fission could be used to start thermonuclear reaction in deuterium (heavy hydrogen). "After a few weeks of hard thought," Teller recalls, "I decided that deuterium could not be ignited...